Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Faith rewarded

One Wisconsin pro-life organization has adopted a unique and simple strategy to inspire people to celebrate a culture of life.

Wisconsin Right to Life’s new pro-life evangelism is the “Pass this on for me” campaign: a section of their website, where they find uplifting videos posted on YouTube celebrating life and family, allowing others to pass on their powerful and positive messages.

This video is by the mother of Bryce, who describes being encouraged to abort her 35 week baby after a diagnosis of hydrocephaly. She had already had two miscarriages, and they used her fear of losing her fertility as well as her fear of her child suffering -- offering to "decompress" her baby's head "and take him out, so you can have kids again."

But she stayed strong and held on fast to her baby.

When he was born, Bryce didn't move or breathe. His father was told to hand the baby to mom so she'd have a chance to hold him before he died. And the heartbroken new mother prayed, "Lord, please give me more time with my baby."

Watch the video to see how that prayer was answered.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4:18a

28 comments:

These days, hydrocephalus is far from a fatal diagnosis -- I heard the death rates used to be something like 50-50, but now it's down in the single digits thanks to better surgical shunts to drain the fluid.

Yes, sometimes hydrocephaly births have a good outcome, but they always carry the RISK of destroying the mother's fertility.

This particular woman is lucky but she might have been unlucky, and then she'd probably sue the docs for NOT doing a D&E.

Rachel, the video is graphic but it omits the fact that when one does a D&E, one starts by stopping the fetal heart with an intracardiac injection. So all the gorey stuff is being done to a DEAD fetus.

Rachel, the video is graphic but it omits the fact that when one does a D&E, one starts by stopping the fetal heart with an intracardiac injection. So all the gorey stuff is being done to a DEAD fetus. Only because pro-life forces have worked to make partial-birth abortion illegal. Prior to that time, abortionists would do "all the gory stuff" on a LIVE fetus -- for as long as a fetus *could* live with his or her brains being sucked out of the skull.

There is pressure, and then there is offering information and options. I don't exactly know what this woman's doctors said to her, in what words, but it would have been irresponsible of them if they didn't tell her of her son's medical problems. Her newborn son's head didn't look particularly huge in the home video, but some babies with this condition have enormous heads, requiring very large c-section incisions -- again, doctors have to tell patients of the all risks.

She made an informed choice -- that's the point. And there was a happy ending -- that's nice.

Even if it didn't have a happy ending, even if her newborn had died in her arms, that would have been her right, too. That's what "informed consent" is all about.

L, they'd not have made as much progress treating hydrocephaly if all the moms had given up and aborted. It took brave, loving moms seeking better options to force doctors to make this happen.

OC, where's the sense of perspective there? Paying with a child's life to reduce the risk that mom can make another baby later? If she's so fond of babies why is she killing this one?

And you claim that they kill the baby before they take him apart but LeRoy Carhart, late abortionist who challenged the PBA law, says otherwise:

Question: How do you go about dismembering that extremity?

Carhart: Just traction and rotation, grasping the portion that you can get a hold of which would be usually somewhere up the shaft of the exposed portion of the fetus, pulling down on it through the os, using the internal os as your counter-traction and rotating to dismember the shoulder or the hip or whatever it would be. Sometimes you will get one leg and you can’t get the other leg out.

Question: In that situation, are you, when you pull on the arm and remove it, is the fetus still alive?

RE: "OC, where's the sense of perspective there? Paying with a child's life to reduce the risk that mom can make another baby later? If she's so fond of babies why is she killing this one?"

The "child" is inside the mother's body. That means killing it in order to safeguard the mother's fertility is justified.

Carhart's testimony was before the Partial-Birth ban went into effect. Not relevant now. Rachel presented that video as if it were applicable today. It's not. That means Rachel is either ignorant, or a liar.

"L, they'd not have made as much progress treating hydrocephaly if all the moms had given up and aborted. It took brave, loving moms seeking better options to force doctors to make this happen."

Somehow, I don't think doctors need to be "forced" to develop different approaches to treatable conditions.

And golly, if all moms "gave up and aborted" all pregnancies, there would be no people left! But even pro-choice people still choose to have babies.

I don't know what the stats are, but I would guess that most women, when told at 35 weeks that their baby has a very serious condition, but that it treatment is successful, there is a decent chance that he will not only survive but also have a shot at a pretty good quality of life, would opt for treatment instead of termination. Heck, I'm about as pro-abortion rights as it gets, but that's what I would have done.

No pun intended, but it seems like a "no-brainer" to me. Heh.

On the other hand, if my any of my babies had been lacking vital organs or something, and it could be demonstrated to me beyond a doubt that they had conditions incompatible with life outside my body, I would have chosen termination over c-section.

OC, the PBA ban applied to pulling the baby out intact except the head, then killing it. There's nothing in it that forbids doing what Carhart was doing, i.e. pulling it out in chunks and letting it die in the process.

And note that you abortion fans had no problem with that. Babies that could have been delivered alive and put in an isolette in the NICU, but hey, if Mom prefers Junior in bloody chunks, then he gets something even medieval executioners were too kind to do. Before people were drawn and quartered, they were hanged. Death by dismemberment is something we civilized folks reserve for babies whose only "crime" is that mom just wants them pulled apart.

Somehow, I don't think doctors need to be "forced" to develop different approaches to treatable conditions.You're missing the point -- many conditions are/were considered to be untreatable in the not-too-distant past (or "not worth treating" -- as in the case of babies with anencephaly who are often withheld treatment that might extend their life, or are only given the barest of palliative care, unless the parents fight for more medical care). Only by changing the presupposition that some conditions were untreatable did medical advances happen. "Force" may be too strong a word in some cases, but not in others.

And golly, if all moms "gave up and aborted" all pregnancies, there would be no people left! Again, you missed the point -- Christina said, "all the moms" in reference to those whose babies had hydrocephaly, not "all the moms in the world."

I don't know what the stats are, but I would guess that most women, when told at 35 weeks that their baby has a very serious condition, but that it treatment is successful, there is a decent chance that he will not only survive but also have a shot at a pretty good quality of life, would opt for treatment instead of termination. But many are *not* told that. Many are told that their baby will die regardless, or that there is no treatment option available. Some are hurried into a preterm induction of labor without even understanding that they are signing up their baby for an early and certain death -- you can check out "Be Not Afraid" in Christina's sidebar for stories like this.

The shunt to treat hydrocephalus was first developed before abortion was legalized, before women were legally compelled to "choose life" even when they wanted to choose otherwise. So this is chicken-egg.

There were always (and still are, and always will be) women who insist on carrying to term no matter how grim the baby's prognosis, as well as women who choose to abort even perfectly healthy pregnancies.

And hydrocephalus is not anencephaly. There are different degrees of the latter, but I would certainly have aborted a baby like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enencephaly.jpg

However, if another mother wanted to carry him/her to term, that should be her decision.

Yeah, I agree, I thought it was a mistake to oppose the "Partial-birth" abortion ban.

I understood why some people did oppose it, because the term "Partial-birth abortion" was bogus, non-medical, invented specifically for the purpose of that law. But over all, once we knew the ban would only require that the heart be stopped before starting to take the fetus out, that should have been the moment to go along with the ban.

I know anencephaly is not the same thing as hydrocephaly; but I don't remember reading of other cases of the latter, and do remember cases of the former. For example, in Ina May Gaskin's book "Spiritual Midwifery," she tells the story of one of the births she attended in her hippie commune, Baby Ira, who was born with anencephaly (this was back in the 70s, so it was very unexpected). When the baby was born, they took him to the hospital, which they figured was able to deal with problems such as the baby had, expecting that he would get expert help, at the least something on his head, and perhaps intravenous feeding or something. Instead when they went to check on him a few days later, he had been basically ignored, not given food or water, emaciated. The parents immediately took him home and loved him (and fed him!) until he died of natural causes.

You can also read the story of Baby Faith whose mother chose a C-section as that was the best hope of having the baby to be born alive. She cared for her daughter for about 3 months, until the baby's death. The doctor was extremely unwilling to allow the mother to have a C-section, but finally relented.

In reading stories like that, I've wondered what I would do. First, though, I would probably never be faced with such a situation, since I generally decline ultrasounds, so would not be diagnosed. But if I did somehow find out, I've wondered if I would have a C-section for my baby if it had anencephaly. I don't think that I would. If there were a reasonable expectation of life (if the diagnosis were of some other condition, for example), I probably would, but with so many anencephalic babies dying within just a few minutes or hours of birth, I'm not sure it would be worth it to me. But then, I haven't been faced with it, so perhaps I would change my mind if I actually were faced with it. Still, I would not have an abortion; and I would strongly question any doctor that tried to talk me into an abortion or preterm induction by scaring me about losing my future fertility and/or my life if I were to continue the pregnancy and give birth naturally (or have a C-section). I understand the risks of having a C-section, but don't understand how being pregnant a few weeks longer can suddenly become terribly risky.

Yeah, OC. More doctors in specialties are learning to kill instead of heal. You may think this is a good thing, but I don't consider killing helpless, innocent human beings to be a decent thing for anybody to be doing.

"Mainstream" doesn't mean right. Racism was once mainstream. Witness the erstwhile popularity of minstrel shows. We tend to be blind to the evils of our own age.

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